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By now you may have had the chance to check out the new season listings for Spring 2011. If you have then hopefully you noticed a show called Deadman Wonderland. If you didn’t then here’s some information about the show.

Deadman Wonderland is the story about a boy named Igarashi Ganta who’s entire class is killed right before his eyes by a mysterious figure. Ganta is then assumed guilty of the crime and sent to an unusual prison called Deadman Wonderland. What makes this prison unusual on the surface is the inclusion of prisoner games that serve as entertainment for visitors. Perhaps in a nod to Rome these games are to the death. As if that isn’t unusual enough within the prison their exist special prisoners who have strange powers. Ganta must find a way to survive this hellish place and if he’s lucky one day clear his name and find the one truly responsible for the massacre of his classmates.

Since this manga is illustrated and written by the creator of Eureka Seven, I knew I had to check out the series. I first read the manga via scans, and then upon release in America immediately began to purchase all of the volumes. I strongly recommend the manga, and hopefully, if the anime lives up to its predecessor, I’ll be able to recommend that to you as well.

2. PIXELOID: 5th Dimension Girl

Tokyohive.com seems to want to make sure that I, and all its other readers, are regularly informed about which Japanese idol is being featured in Weekly Playboy that week. [Note to readers: Weekly Playboy shows no nudity] Normally I think nothing much of this except that occasionally I’ll see an idol who’s career I might follow a bit more closely. Well one girl, who I presume could be an idol, made me take a second look after Anime News Network actually featured her issue. That girl is none other than Hatsune Miku, who is of course best known for being a Vocaloid.

I really don’t know what I expected with this but the promo video indicates that Weekly Playboy decided to blend the popularity of 2D Miku with the beauty of a real live cosplayer thus forming, their words, the fifth dimension girl PIXELOID. I suppose for a magazine that typically caters to boys wanting to see 3D girls this was a natural choice, and for my own personal taste I tend to agree. Now I haven’t seen the full spread of the magazine, although I’m sure it’s online, but I can only imagine that this release got a bump in readership solely for Miku’s inclusion. All in all I think that while a magazine like that has a steady audience as is, it’s always nice to try something new every now and then.

3. Hentai? LOL! WTF?!?

So everyone seems to have focused on how the Oxford English Dictionary decided to include modern day words such as LOL into its infinitely lofty, and now perhaps slightly less prestigious pages. What most of those same news articles missed though Anime News Network caught and delievered – the inclusion of the word hentai. I have learned in life, and sometimes through some rather awkward experiences, that many who are aware of anime but have never watched anime assume 90% of it is hentai. Of course that’s not true. It’s more like 80%. Seriously though that’s not true either, but to seperate hentai from anime would be like seperating Showtime from American TV, which apparently my cable package will not let me do. So while I’d rather seperate hentain from the collective consciousness of most non-anime fans, I can certainly understand how it has earned its place in a dictionary, even one as lauded as the Oxford English Dictionary.